The Daily Will No Longer Be Indexed

Rupert Murdoch really wants you to read The Daily, a.k.a. The First iPad Newspaper Ever, on an iPad. There is some free Daily content online, but it wasn’t easy to find–until L.A. writer/entrepreneur Andy Baio figured out a way to extract data from the file downloaded to his iPad and post it on Tumblr. Mr. Baio kept up The Daily: Indexed for three weeks with the blessing of the paper’s publisher, who took it as a sign that The Daily was taking off like a LOLcat, but yesterday Mr. Baio announced he’s done. The free trial period is over, Baio wrote, and his intimate exposure to The Daily’s content has not induced him to subscribe (ed. note – actually the free trial has been extended…again).

The exercise was fun, he wrote. “They seem like a nice bunch of folks, and I hope they succeed with their big publishing experiment.”

Mr. Baio offered to hand over the keys to the Tumblr should a Daily fan express interest in maintaining the index, but so far the only comments on the ultimate Daily: Indexed post are “Oh man. Sad. And…ends my reading of the Daily” and a link to the final post in Gawker’s short-lived “Already Over” feature. Haters are going to hate, but anyone who wants to continue reading The Daily’s content for free on the web can catch a few links on The Daily’s official Tumblr.